Lionel Barrymore on stage, screen and radio

Barrymore in the 1910s

Lionel Barrymore (born Lionel Herbert Blythe; 1878–1954) was an American actor of stage, screen, and radio. He also directed several films, wrote scripts, created etchings, sketches, and paintings, and composed music.^[1] He was the eldest child of the actors Maurice Barrymore and Georgie Drew Barrymore, and his two siblings were John and Ethel; these and other family members were part of an acting dynasty.^[2][3] Although reluctant to follow his parents' career,^[4] Barrymore appeared together with his grandmother Louisa Lane Drew in a stage production of The Rivals at the age of 15.^[5] He soon found success on stage in character roles. Although he took a break from acting in 1906–09 to train in Paris as a painter, he was not successful as an artist and returned to the US and acting.^[1] He also joined his family troupe, from 1910, in their vaudeville act.^[6]

Barrymore began his film career in 1911, appearing in numerous silent films, many of which have subsequently been lost. In 1912 he signed a contract with D. W. Griffith's Biograph Company and appeared as a character actor in short films before moving into feature-length productions in 1914.^[1] He began writing scripts and directing films shortly afterwards, and for the next five years he did not act on the legitimate stage.^[7] Although he had several successes on Broadway after the First World War, he encountered strongly negative criticism in a 1921 production of Macbeth and in three productions in a row in 1925. Afterwards, he never again appeared on the New York stage.^[1] In 1925 he signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he became a close friend of Louis B. Mayer and for whom he made numerous films.^[1] He directed several films from 1929 to 1931 but concentrated on acting after that.^[8][9]

Barrymore became well known in curmudgeonly roles.^[10] In 1938 he broke his hip, and, aggravated by arthritis, he lived the remainder of his life in a wheelchair.^[11] Mayer made sure that roles were found or written to accommodate Barrymore, who continued to act in films until 1953.^[1][12] During that time he appeared as Dr. Gillespie in the popular Dr. Kildare film series with Lew Ayres in the titular role,^[13] and as Mr. Potter in It's a Wonderful Life—a role that was highly placed on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 Heroes and Villains^[14] in a film that the critic Philip French described as "a complex inspirational work".^[15] Beginning in the 1930s, Barrymore increasingly worked in radio, initially as Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, which was broadcast annually from 1934 to 1953,^[16] then in Mayor of the Town beginning in 1942,^[17] and also in a radio series spun off from the Dr. Kildare films (playing the same character that he had played in the films), among others.^[18]

Two of the films in which Barrymore appeared—Grand Hotel (1932) and You Can't Take It with You (1938)—won the Academy Award for Best Picture.^[19][20] He was considered for the Academy Award for Best Director for his 1929 film, Madame X,^{[lower-alpha 1]} and won the Best Actor award for his performance in A Free Soul (1931). He was inducted to the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 8, 1960^[22] and is, along with his two siblings, included in the American Theater Hall of Fame.^[23]

Stage appearances

Barrymore (right), with his siblings John and Ethel, 1904^{[lower-alpha 2]}

Barrymore (left) with his brother John in The Jest, September 1919

Barrymore in July 1921

Barrymore in 1923

Filmography

As actor

Poster for Three Friends, 1913

The Wanderer, 1913

Ad for The Quitter, 1916

Ad for Dorian's Divorce, 1916

Ad for The Millionaire's Double, 1917

Barrymore in The Copperhead, 1920

Lantern slide for The Devil's Garden, 1920; Barrymore—on the right—appeared with his wife, Doris Rankin, who sits on the left.

Barrymore and Seena Owen in The Face in the Fog, 1922

Barrymore in Ah, Wilderness!, 1935

Barrymore in a trailer for David Copperfield, 1935

Barrymore in Camille, 1936

Poster for A Family Affair, 1937

Barrymore celebrating his 61st birthday in 1939. Back, from left: Mickey Rooney, Robert Montgomery, Clark Gable, William Powell and Robert Taylor; center: Louis B. Mayer; front, from left: Norma Shearer, Barrymore and Rosalind Russell.

Barrymore in The Bad Man, 1941

Barrymore in 1946 on the set of Duel in the Sun with, from the left, Helen Hayes, Anita Loos and Lillian Gish.

Barrymore as Mr. Potter in It's a Wonderful Life, 1946

The list does not include the 1913 film The Vengeance of Galora, which Barrymore wrote. Although some sources list him as also appearing in the film, his biographers, James Kotsilibas-Davis and Margot Peters, separately state he did not. Kotsilibas-Davis also lists Fighting Blood (1911), My Hero (1912) and The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) as films in which Barrymore did not appear, despite claims of other biographers to the contrary; Peters does not list the films in her filmography of the actor.^[7][28]

As director

Barrymore directing The Rogue Song (1930)

Radio broadcasts

Barrymore broadcasting on the Armed Forces Radio Service, c. 1947

Television broadcast

Notes and references

Notes

References

Sources